“Chapter 5: The Price of Treason
I reached out and grabbed Miller by the throat. It was too easy. He was soft now. He’d spent too much time behind a desk and not enough time on the road.
“”Five years,”” I whispered in his ear, loud enough for Elena to hear. “”I sat in a dark room for five years so you could be a father. And you spent that time trying to bury me. You didn’t just take my life, Miller. You tried to erase my soul.””
Elena stepped forward, her voice trembling. “”Jax, please. Don’t… don’t kill him.””
I looked at her. “”I’m not going to kill him, Elena. That’s too easy. I’m going to make him live with the fact that he has nothing left.””
I turned back to the crowd of bikers. “”He took the club money. He took the property. Who here thinks he gets to keep it?””
A roar of “”NO!”” shook the trees.
“”Silas,”” I called out. “”Get the trucks. Everything in that clubhouse, everything in this house that was bought with Reaper blood—it goes back to the men who earned it. As for Miller…””
I looked at his tuxedo. I reached down and ripped the “”Reaper”” pin he still wore on his lapel, tearing the fabric.
“”You’re stripped,”” I said. “”No patch. No protection. No brothers. You’re just a man in a cheap suit who owes a lot of people a lot of answers.””
I let go of his throat. He fell to his knees, gasping for air, sobbing into the dirt. Elena stood over him, but she didn’t reach down to help him. She looked at me, a silent plea in her eyes for things to go back to the way they were.
But that was the thing about ghosts. You can’t bring them back to life once you’ve buried them.
Chapter 6: The Long Road Home
The “”wedding”” was over. The guests had fled, their luxury cars peeling out of the driveway in a desperate attempt to get away from the “”animals.””
We spent the afternoon reclaiming what was ours. The bikers worked with a silent, grim efficiency. By sunset, the Sterling Estate was empty of its finery. We didn’t take what wasn’t ours—we just took back the honor Miller had tried to sell.
I stood on the porch, looking out over the valley. Silas walked up, handing me a set of keys.
“”We found your old Panhead,”” he said. “”Miller had it tucked away in a shed, covered in a tarp. He couldn’t bring himself to sell it. Maybe he had a tiny piece of a conscience left. Or maybe he was just waiting for the day you’d come for it.””
I took the keys. They felt familiar in my hand.
Elena walked out of the house, her wedding dress stained with grass and dirt at the hem. She’d taken off the diamonds.
“”Where are you going, Jax?”” she asked.
“”Wherever the road goes,”” I said. “”I’ve had enough of walls.””
“”Can I… is there any room for me?”” she whispered.
I looked at her, and for a second, I saw the girl who used to wait for me by the highway. But then I saw the woman who had stood at the altar with my enemy while I was behind bars.
“”You promised to wait, Elena,”” I said softly. “”You didn’t. And I promised to come back. I did.””
I walked down the steps, past Miller who was still sitting in the dirt, staring at nothing. I hopped on my bike and kicked the starter. The engine roared to life—a deep, guttural scream that felt like it was clearing the soot out of my lungs.
I didn’t look back. I had two thousand brothers behind me and an open horizon in front of me.
Justice isn’t always a gavel in a courtroom. Sometimes, it’s just the sound of a thousand engines leaving a traitor in the dust where he belongs.
The road was long, and for the first time in five years, I was the one steering.”
